Meditations of a Hermit by St. Charles de Foucauld

• Meditations of St. Charles de Foucauld
• Hermit, saint, and martyr of the Sahara
• Poverty & humility among the Tuareg Muslims
• Challenges the comfort of the world and inspires us to live for God alone
• Beautifiul insights of a life lived fully for Christ

“My vocation,” declared Charles de Foucauld, “is to lead a hidden, solitary life.” In his desert hermitage, he accomplished that vocation with heartfelt simp­licity and singular devotion to Christ crucified. At the same time, thanks to his heroic efforts to convert the Tuareg people to the Christian faith, he accepted the responsibility of writing, teaching, and preaching in order to faithfully follow the will of God.

Of his writings, as René Bazin notes in his Preface, the vast majority were neither intended for the world’s reading nor devised to establish their author as a “public figure.” Rather, their sole aim was “to measure out the small amount of truth that the ‘Poor of the Sahara’ were capable of absorbing, just so much light as their blind souls could take in without being startled; for eyes, unaccustomed to light, will close their lids if too much brightness is shown to them all at once.”

As soon as I believed in God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live for him alone. (Saint Charles de Foucauld)

The happy exception to this rule is Meditations of a Hermit. De Fouc­auld, as Pope Benedict XVI noted, abandoned everything to follow the Lord Jesus “with humility and poverty.” Meditations of a Hermit is an occasi(more...)